To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism

by Rosemary Radford Ruether

Clearly and lucidly written. It belongs on the shelf beside Kung and Schillebeeckx, whose christology it challenges. Library Journal With impressive scholarship and deft economy of language, Rosemary Ruether targets what she believes to be the four most 'pressing' questions for Christians 'political commitment in the light of poverty and oppression...anti-Judaism and religious intolerance...justice for the female half of the human race...human survival in the face of chronic environmental abuse.' The Christian Century The book synthesizes many of Ruether's earlier writings and can serve as an admirable introduction to the significant work of this contemporary theologian. Emmanuel [Ruether's] thesis is a useful and fascinating one, intriguingly and illumninatively illustrated by her choices. Ruether sustains...the assertion of the vital importance of the relationship between cultural criticism and Christology. AAR Christology Newsletter Ruether here turns Christology itself into a principle for the critique of culture and a source for an alternative vision of the human prospect.... There is new voice as well as new insight to the brief, provocative chapters of To Change the World. Ruether is repeating something she has said before, but in doing so she is saying something new. Spirituality Today

Genres: Theology, Feminism, Religion, Christian

85 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1983

About the author

Visiting Professor of Feminist Theology B.A. Scripps College; M.S., Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School

Rosemary Radford Ruether was the Carpenter Emerita Professor of Feminist Theology at Pacific School of Religion and the GTU, as well as the Georgia Harkness Emerita Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. She had enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, and activist in the Roman Catholic Church, and was well known as a groundbreaking figure in Christian feminist theology.

Education

B.A. – Scripps College
M.S., Ph.D. – Claremont Graduate School

Recent Publications / Achievements

Christianity and Social Systems: Historical Constructions and Ethical Challenges (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009)

Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism (New Press, 2008)

America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence(Equinox, 2007)

Encyclopedia of Women And Religion in North America, with Rosemary Skinner Keller (Indiana University Press, 2006)

Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (University of California Press, 2005)

Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005)

Mountain Sisters: From Convent To Community In Appalachia, Forward (University Press of Kentucky, 2004)

The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Fortress Press, 2002

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip K. Dick, in his batshit insane (the polite term is "visionary") How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later , explains that what we think of as reality is just an illusion created by Satan to confuse us: in actual fact, as certain miraculous coincidences revealed to him, we are still in the world of the early Christian believers, and the twenty-first century doesn't exist. One can be forgiven for thinking that PKD had once again taken too much speed. But here, the admirably sane Rosemary Radford Ruether lays out another vision that has strange points of contact with Dick's. Ruether doesn't try to convince us that we're literally in the first century AD. She does, however, think that critical things, which determined future Western thinking, happened in the early years of the Christian era, as people tried to sort out the confusing message they had received from Jesus. Ruether argues they did a bad job of it, and that we need to carefully revisit that period and consider what Jesus actually meant.

Somehow, the teachings of Christ have been used to justify a system in which the Church, which is intimately linked to the State, has power over the laity and over all unbelievers; in which men have power over women; in which human beings have power over nature; and in which people are encouraged to accept the hierarchy imposed on them and fix their hopes on spiritual rewards after death. But would Jesus have sanctioned any of this? Ruether, who knows an impressive amount about the Bible in particular and the history of religion in general, argues that Christ's teachings were in the exact opposite direction. He valued all people equally and made a point of befriending the poor and the outcasts; his closest confidant, the first person who was allowed to see him after his claimed resurrection from the dead, was a prostitute. In the Lord's Prayer, which Ruether is inclined to see as the most clearly authentic and unchanged message we have received from Christ, he focusses on the everyday necessities of life: getting enough to eat, being forgiven for what we have done wrong.

Ruether does not mince her words and says straight out that the modern Church has been taken over by Satan. One is rather surprised that she still considers herself a Christian, but her reasoning is straightforward. She is a Christian trying her best to follow the actual teachings of Christ; the people who are trying to maintain an oppressive, misogynistic, rigidly hierarchical church are either in a grievous state of sin, or not Christians at all. I am a little surprised that she hasn't been excommunicated, and that her writings are set texts in many theology courses. I am even more surprised that I'd never heard of her until a retired nun lent me one of her books a couple of months ago. In a time where Donald Trump expects and gets overwhelming support from the American Christian community, Ruether and the other feminist theologians she's worked with should be famous. They can put the case in words which the American Right understands. I am sure they can convince some of them that they have misunderstood certain extremely important things, and that they should be fighting on the other side in the battle that's currently playing out for American's soul. It's at least as vital now as it was in the first century AD, and it's essentially the same battle.

Well, who would have thought it. Maybe Philip K. Dick did have a point after all.

[Alessandra Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Articulate Feminist theologian talking about liberation theology, revolutionary Jesus, the problem with Christology, feminism and environmentalism. What more do you want. If you want to read an indepth review I posted it on my blog: alessandrainthecity.blogspot.com

[Kylie Vernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

this probably changed the course of my life.

i am deeply moved by her consideration of a jubilee-centered christology that orients us toward economic, ecological, and hierarchical liberation.

now to dive into Gutiérrez…